Sneaky Climby Bastards

                  So hey, I know I said I would explain about the project and the work we do here, but I might save that for some other time because it might be long. And I don't have much time, but I figure I should post more often. So this might be a filler episode. Also I said I would do a post on the wildlife I've seen but I figure I might stretch that material to cover several posts, because otherwise I will definitely run out of things to say. It turns out I'm not actually all that interesting a person, which is why I have to trick you into thinking I am with adorable monkey photos.

Is it working?

So we just came back from our holiday, which I boringly spent at home, because we each have to spend one holiday (we get five days at the end of each month) guarding the house. This is why I was able to get my shit together to write a post.

Now returning from vacation it becomes abundantly clear why we have to wake up before the monkeys and stay with them until they get their tiny black and white arses to sleep. When you go looking for them and you don't know where they are, you don't find them. For a long time. It turns out capuchins are sneaky, climby bastards. These are the same monkeys that jump about and scream and break branches like the world's about to end whenever you are with them, but as soon as you leave them to their own devices for a few days, all of a sudden you cannot hear them at all. Not a peep. 

 By the way, that previous line was a joke premised on the fact that "peep" is the technical term for a very common capuchin vocalisation.

Anybody? Anybody?

#monkeyhumour #trustmethisstuffisfunny #thiskilledinthefield
#isthishowhashtagswork #idontknow #betteraskthemonkeys #theyusetwitterallthetime
#hahaclassic #yousee,twittersareanothercommoncapuchinvocalisation
#brilliant

But the upside is that when you're searching for them you have time to stop and take a look at some of the other wildlife, like the howler monkeys.

Here's one we found in a pretty pink tree

Unfortunately if you look a bit closer, it becomes apparent that this particular monkey has been traumatised from a young age and is suffering from severe PTSD.

   

I have seen... things...

Anyway as adorable as these guys are the reason we don't study them is because they spend their entire days just hanging around, eating leaves and howling. They're kinda boring actually.

Oh... I'm sorry... I thought we were having fun, never mind.

Apologies, Fictional Anthropomorphised Howler Monkey, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You guys do have one thing going for you.

Your gigantic white balls

Anyway, right now there are a bunch of you (probably) saying: "But Ed! You said you were going to show us wildlife, and all you have is more monkeys? There's more than life to monkeys, you know." And right now the same bunch of you is probably receiving a lot of confused looks from the people in the room with you, because that's an odd thing to say to a computer screen. Hopefully they will assume you are on Skype and move on. Try not to blush too hard or you will give the game away.

Anyway never fear, I do have photos of non-monkeys. Here is a pretty kingfisher.

And here is a scary rattlesnake.

And you will get more in due course. In the meantime I thought I would continue the long-running tradition that I began last post of ending my posts with photos of infants looking uncomfortable while being groomed by mothers and aunts.